FEDERATED OPERATING MODEL
Last year we introduced a significantly simplified operating model and new leadership structure. The aim of the federated operating model was to enable more agile and swift execution of our strategy by decentralising decision-making and streamlining the ways of working across our business.
Under this operating model, we consolidated five business units each led by a managing director, reporting directly to the CEO, and deployed category-specific services from the centre back to the business units, (including the decentralisation of our procurement function). The focus this year was embedding this operating model, simplifying, and clarifying the roles and interdependencies between business units and enabling functions, and ensuring greater collaboration and cohesion across the organisation. This implementation has been the catalyst to the turnaround performance we have seen in the FY25 financial year, significantly enhancing the quality of decision-making and enabling speed in execution and approval of structural investments required for sustainable long-term growth.
Consequently, we have scaled down the head office and are in the process of relocating our business leadership teams to the factories and operations. This will enable strengthened collaboration and accountability. It will also facilitate a more hands-on culture of decentralised decisionmaking as close to the frontline as possible. An important outcome of this process has been a rejuvenated performance-based winning culture with greater individual ownership across the team and an enhanced willingness to take considered risks, fail forward and learn quickly.
There is a vacancy for the role chief marketing and strategy officer.
IGNITE OUR PEOPLE
Creating a great place to work remains fundamental to achieving our strategic ambitions. We strive to ensure this through our people strategy that guides us in attracting, developing and mobilising our talent, and driving winning performance that galvanises our growth agenda and our purpose to nourish and nurture more lives every day. Our people strategy has four pillars:
Our winning culture of consumer obsession, execution excellence, agility and innovation remains a critical enabler of our strategy and how we win in the market. We have made valuable progress in transforming our ways of work and bringing our values and winning behaviours to life. These efforts have begun to translate into tangible outcomes, particularly in our ability to attract and retain high-calibre talent. Our talent pipeline strength is healthy, with succession planning maintaining a 3:1 ratio for critical roles and with time-to-fill vacancy improving to 56 days, down from 59 and beating our 60-day target. We filled 61% of leadership vacancies internally, demonstrating the strength of our internal succession bench.
We maintained our efforts throughout the year on developing agile, change-fit leaders, building robust talent pipelines and core capabilities across key disciplines. We continued to execute our plans to "Bring Back the Tiger's Roar" by igniting the employee experience through holistic listening to employee feedback and taking targeted actions to address identified opportunities.
We saw improved workforce stability with attrition dropping to 9% group-wide, demonstrating the effectiveness of our talent investments and our culture transformation journey. We have continued to execute targeted actions in response to the opportunities identified through the 2024 Voice of Tiger engagement and people experience survey, improving connection between leaders and their teams and inclusive decision-making through structured engagements and dialogues, rejuvenating the use of our recognition framework and tools to recognise teams and individuals for a job well done and building the capability of frontline and midlevel leaders so that they are equipped to inspire winning performance in their teams. The Voice of Tiger Survey 2025 was conducted in November. The results will inform FY26 culture and engagement priorities. Through our continuous improvement of our employee value proposition we have also maintained our Top Employer certification in South Africa, with growing brand visibility and engagement across digital platforms, reinforcing our position as a destination of choice for top talent.
The Tiger's Roar leadership summit held this year involved the top one hundred leaders across Tiger Brands and was aimed at accelerating the transition towards the federated operating model ways of working. The One Tiger Way Playbook was co-created at the summit, and has enabled the standardisation of group-wide processes, digital platforms and ways of working. The launch of the Playbook marked a significant milestone in embedding a unified culture across the business. Adoption has been accelerated through leadership and site team engagement and onboarding programmes, ensuring that the Playbook becomes a lived expression of how we work and lead. This further cemented cross-functional collaboration and agile execution as well as eased the onboarding and integration of new "Tigers" into the organisation.
A key achievement for the year, part of the acceleration of our digital transformation journey, has been the successful migration of all our employees to a single digital One Tiger People Platform, Workday, providing universal self-service and AI capabilities for all Tiger people and achieving streamlining, integration and automation of people business processes. This included providing first-time digital, online access for shopfloor people through the installation of shared tablet kiosks and Wifi-access spots across our manufacturing sites and depots. This implementation has also enabled the Voice of Tiger employee engagement and experience survey, to be conducted through Workday instead of a separate platform, for the first time this year. This further digitises and turbocharges our employees' experience of the organisation whilst igniting our people's ability to execute their day-to-day roles with passion, excellence, and agility as they take advantage of opportunities to grow their careers across our diverse businesses.
We maintained our focus on employee wellbeing through our THRIVE employee programme. As part of this programme, we continued to provide counselling services to our employees and their families through our partnership with Lyra as well as engaged our employees through seminars covering alcohol and substance abuse, physical wellbeing, mental health and digital safety. For executive wellbeing, we invested in comprehensive physical and mental health assessments for the leadership team population.
Our employee relations environment continued to be stable, with FY24 – 25 wage negotiations concluded without incident and no work stoppages recorded. Partnership between our site leadership teams, our employees and our union partners continue to grow from strength to strength. Nearly all sites secured multi-year wage agreements for the FY25 – 26 cycle, solidifying greater stability and creating fertile ground for our productivity and efficiency improvements to be implemented.
Focus areas for FY26 include sustaining internal talent mobility and succession readiness through our targeted development programmes, enhancing the execution of our workforce plans and talent acquisition strategy to ensure that Tiger Brands has the core and digital skills to enable accelerated business performance and growth. We will continue to improve female representation in senior and technical roles, embedding "One Tiger Way" ways of working, and accelerating future-fit capability development aligned to automation, digital enablement, artificial intelligence and manufacturing excellence. We will also continue nurturing our winning culture, unique employee experience, employee value proposition and employer brand performance in the market to ensure that we continue to attract and retain leading edge talent.
GAME-CHANGING INNOVATION
Delivering innovation in products, packaging and processes is critical to achieving our growth ambitions and to meeting rapidly evolving consumer needs. Tiger Brands has a long history of innovation, and we have introduced a more streamlined two-track innovation process that ensures continued renovation of our core products, while encouraging experimentation with high risk, high-reward innovations that are more appropriate to meet evolving consumer demands where speed-to-market is more significant.
This year, we refined our innovation principles, developing innovation guardrails aligned to business unit dynamics, to ensure strategic alignment and efficiency. These dynamics recognise the role and shape of innovation in each category and have informed the innovation targets for each business unit – departing from the previous top-down methodology.
In FY25, our prioritised focus on successful delivery of our cost leadership initiatives and the turnaround of the organisation has seen us focus more on renovation (which we define as being part of innovation), with next year's focus being on having a clearer innovation pipeline in place across all aspects of innovation.
The focus will be in the following areas:
COMPETITIVE DIGITAL CAPABILITIES
Competitive digital capabilities are a key enabler of Tiger Brands' strategy, which is centred around leveraging digital to improve productivity and efficiency and driving growth for the business. Our digital transformation roadmap includes delivering cost savings, providing AI-enabled digital customer and innovation capabilities and digitising our supply chain. All of these will allow us to respond faster to consumer demands and ultimately drive sales and improved profitability.
Our digital strategy provides a comprehensive framework and roadmap, ensuring that the organisational culture embraces technology, and that appropriate measures are in place for cyber resilience and effective digital governance practices.
In responding to the increasing uptake of digital solutions, our focus in the short term has been on driving greater adoption of our currently implemented world-class systems and ensuring optimised return on investments already made. We are also exploring select use cases on leading-edge technologies such as AI that can be used as confined pilots to test capability, impact and relevance, and we are driving automation and best-practice adoption in functions that can provide material financial savings and efficiency benefits over the short to medium term.
This year, we continued with our digitisation journey in the following areas:
From a governance perspective, we have established an AI committee to monitor, direct and further the AI agenda within the company, ensuring responsible deployment as required, of leading-edge technologies.
COMPETITIVE MANUFACTURING
Our competitive manufacturing strategy has been adapted to the federated operating model, outlining our path to achieving sustainable, profitable growth by driving operational excellence in manufacturing, underpinned by a skilled and empowered workforce. Our strategy is designed to be aligned with global manufacturing trends and challenges and seeks to build a future-ready manufacturing ecosystem that embeds sustainability, process innovation, and continuous improvement at every stage of the manufacturing process.
Our manufacturing strategy focuses on six interconnected areas:
Manufacturing excellence and technology footprint
Our ability to deliver long-term value depends ultimately on the quality of our manufacturing operations. Through our capex programme, we are striving to build and maintain agile, fit-for-purpose operations that deliver continuous improvement in productivity as efficiently and safely as possible, ensuring product quality, operational excellence and enhanced environmental performance. We continue to drive optimisation of our manufacturing footprint to harness operational synergies and efficiencies across our sites, which in 2026 will include a state-of-the-art "super bakery" – unlocking significant value (see our current manufacturing footprint).
Our total capital expenditure this year amounted to R1.4 billion, with investments to expand and optimise our existing capacity, realise innovation opportunities, improve our energy and water security, upgrade infrastructure and ensure regulatory compliance.
We have expanded implementation of manufacturing excellence custom and practice (MECP) from an initial 10 priority sites to encompass all our sites, making excellent progress on implementing foundational standards and practices across our operations for overall equipment effectiveness (OEE).
Food safety and product quality
We manage food safety and quality (FSAQ) to globally recognised standards ( see page ??). We aim to position FSAQ as an important manufacturing competitive advantage through three core pillars: restoring basics and strengthening foundational practices; building capabilities and culture to embed a quality and food safety mindset; and raising the bar to drive continuous improvement.
As part of our federated operating model, we have decentralised the FSAQ function, which has strengthened accountability at source, improved responsiveness and decision-making, and freed capacity at group level for focusing on strategy and governance. We have continued implementing our digital quality management platform, rolling out the supplier quality management module across all sites, providing full visibility through dashboards and covering risk assessments, audits, non-conformances and closure tracking.
Looking ahead, we aim to complete digitisation of our FSAQ management processes by the end of 2026, providing a fully integrated digital platform with AI-enabled insights. This represents the final phase of significant investment in our FSAQ systems.
Health, safety, security and risk
We prioritise zero harm through strong safety, security, health and environment (SSHE) compliance and due diligence (here). Our SSHE programme supports manufacturing excellence by reducing our lost-time injury frequency rate (LTIFR) through improved standards, operational discipline, and behavioural compliance. We cultivate a safety-oriented culture through awareness initiatives and employee engagement.
This year, we advanced the SSHE pillar of our MECP framework beyond foundation level, achieving 90% compliance with foundational requirements across all sites and 80% risk close-out performance. We have shortlisted a set of digital solutions for SSHE management, with rollout planned for 2026. We are near-ready for ISO 45001 certification, which will proceed through a combined audit process in 2026, requiring only minor alignment adjustments. We progressed with ASIB certification across all sites, with 50% of facilities certified in 2025. All sites remain ISO 14001 certified (see here).
On behavioural safety, lock-out tag-out (LOTO) procedure compliance remained a challenge and has been identified as our critical safety risk, with safety risk observations (SROs) raised to address LOTO hazards specifically. We shifted our safety culture messaging from "I am safe" to "We are safe" to emphasise collective responsibility. In our Bakeries division, we introduced dye-stained money protocols in our route-to-market, and we continued with risk assessments, security detail protocols, and driver safety awareness training to reduce route-to-market security incidents.
This year, we recorded an LTIFR of 0.10, a decrease from 0.19 in 2024. Regrettably, we recorded two fatalities in 2025: one in manufacturing and one in route-to-market operations. The manufacturing fatality was in Bakeries and a forklift incident in Langeberg and Ashton Foods (LAF), which has now been disposed of where an employee was hit by a forklift operating in the loading area. The route-to-market fatality was a robbery-related shooting and is currently under investigation.
We recorded 28 lost-time injuries this year, a significant decrease from 55 in 2024. However, machine-related incidents remain a critical concern. The majority of manufacturing LTIs resulted from LOTO violations where workers placed hands into machinery, causing lacerations, or partial or complete loss of limbs. All incidents were reported to the Department of Labour. We maintained contact with injured employees to ensure they received necessary care and rehabilitation support.
In 2026, we will focus on strengthening LOTO compliance and machine guarding improvements as our primary safety interventions, with ongoing vigilance in our Bakeries route-to-market. In addition, our health programme will emphasise dietary education and lifestyle interventions to address cardiovascular risk factors identified in the 2025 medical surveillance data.
Environmental sustainability
Ensuring responsible environmental stewardship is a key component of our strategy to build a world-class, competitive manufacturing capability and a core pillar of our sustainable future strategy. We have set 2030 targets on energy, water, carbon emissions, waste and packaging aimed at significantly reducing the environmental impact of our manufacturing sites ( see page ??). We are implementing strategic initiatives and targeted projects to achieve these commitments, prioritising our most resource-intensive sites and product lines.
This year, we made measurable progress towards our 2030 targets through systematic environmental management improvements across our manufacturing sites. These included:
In 2026, our priority will be advancing renewable energy and emissions reduction initiatives, aiming to secure wheeling contracts for renewable energy supply to our Gauteng sites and concluding four new onsite solar installations under recently signed PPAs. We will also continue resource efficiency and waste diversion programmes and engage suppliers to accelerate the transition to recyclable and PET packaging.
For further details on our management of health and nutrition.
On our performance see here and the sustainability databook.
SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURAL SOURCING
With over 90% of our 2025 revenues being derived from the manufacture of food and beverages, sustainable agricultural sourcing is a key strategic enabler to drive positive commercial and environmental impact across our value chain. Currently, our top three residual risks at a group-level relate to supply chain issues: security of supply (third parties), sustainability of agricultural commodity supply and geopolitical instability. The increasingly material challenges in securing reliable agricultural supply – due to heightened geopolitical instability, climate change and economic and regulatory pressures – has underscored the imperative of promoting sustainable agricultural sourcing practices. This is essential both to ensure the sustainable commercial supply of key commodities and to strengthen environmental and socio-economic resilience across our value chain.
Most of our locally sourced commodities are cultivated in areas under high water stress with significant future risk, while some of our internationally sourced commodities – such as palm oil and cocoa, key ingredients for our snacks and treats business – are associated with deforestation and biodiversity loss. Promoting sustainable and regenerative agricultural practices are essential for preserving natural resources, enhancing climate resilience and ensuring long-term food security.
Many local commercial farmers prioritise export markets, while those serving domestic markets are increasingly shifting to more reliable and profitable crops, reducing the availability of previously plentiful commodities. Many of the smallholder enterprises we work with face significant capacity constraints, making it difficult to bridge the gap between their output and our volume requirements and compliance standards. These dynamics have intensified cost pressures and caused shortages that directly impact our business. While these disruptions force increasingly difficult trade-offs between cost, preferential procurement commitments and supply security, they also expose the limitations of responding reactively to supply challenges.
Our goal is to build a sustainable agricultural supply chain that strengthens security of supply, enhances livelihoods through inclusive participation and strong labour standards, and promotes climate change mitigation and adaptation, with the goal of enabling provision of affordable and accessible nutrition. We have developed a sustainable agricultural sourcing framework and roadmap through to 2030, with clear oversight and reporting lines, a steering committee, and cross-functional working groups for governance and management. We will be implementing this framework in phases from 2026, focusing initially on local priority commodities including grains (wheat, sorghum, oats), culinary products (small white beans, tomatoes, groundnuts) and sugar.
In implementing the sustainable agricultural sourcing framework, we will be establishing direct relationships with small-scale farmers while still collaborating with aggregators through our enterprise and supplier development (ESD) programme, supporting farmer development, and promoting regenerative agricultural practices through our Farmwell and AgriSupplier programmes. These initiatives will be supported by the increased use of digital technologies to improve crop management and yield and provide rigorous market analysis and insights.
Our ESD programme is central to transforming our supply chain and advancing the sustainable sourcing of local priority commodities. Focused on emerging farmer development, the programme integrates preferential procurement, market access, capacity building and channel development, aimed at delivering on our 2030 targets for ethical sourcing and enhanced livelihoods. Our primary method for providing liquidity and business development investment is through the Dipuno ESD Fund, launched in 2019. Over the last three years, our ESD programme has faced significant challenges, with supply chain disruptions, extreme weather and rising costs affecting small farmers, delaying produce deliveries and leading to loan defaults. As a result, we have refreshed our Dipuno Fund strategy to ensure continued transformation and impact, with 2025 initiatives funded through operational budgets and external support mechanisms.
During the year, we onboarded two new agricultural suppliers and one new distributor. We supported nine tomato farmers in Musina – including five women-led farms – with irrigation infrastructure and renewable energy solutions. We supported an aggregator with smart agricultural solutions and drone technology for white bean cultivation and created 131 jobs in the agri-food sector (see sustainability databook).
Looking ahead to 2026, our focus will be on translating the sustainable agricultural sourcing framework to business unit level, and proactive industry and value chain engagements to unlock opportunities and strengthen collaboration. We will expand partnerships with the Land Bank of South Africa and Small Enterprise Development and Finance Agency (SEDFA) to strengthen collaborative support for farmers and SMMEs. And finally, we will begin implementation of the refreshed Dipuno Fund strategy.
For further details on our ethical supply chain practices.
Our approach to identifying our sustainability-related impacts, risks and opportunities is reviewed on here.
